Healthy competition among docs helps bottom line

Stimulating healthy competition among physicians can lead to better outcomes and lower costs, according to Kenneth H. Cohn, a general surgeon and CEO of HealthcareCollaboration.com. For example, a cardiac catheterization lab director inspired colleagues to cut down on clinical variation by displaying cardiologists' data in the cath lab lounge for everyone to see. No one wanted to be the outlier, and within four months, procedure times and outcomes for the entire six-person group were within one standard deviation. They had decreased their vendors to two and cut costs substantially, he wrote in a Hospital Impact blog post this week. Blog Post

FEATURED ADVISOR

Brian Harte, M.D., is president of South Pointe Hospital, a 173-bed acute care, community teaching hospital in Warrensville Heights, Ohio, and part of the Cleveland Clinic Health System. He is also the medical director of the medical operations department of business intelligence and former chairman of the department of hospital medicine. He specializes in perioperative care and hospital-based medical illnesses. He is a senior fellow of hospital medicine with the Society of Hospital Medicine.